Do you want to be able to sprint faster and finally be that decisive step ahead of your opponent? Many top players are characterized by their speed and this gives them a big advantage. That is exactly why it is important for you to work specifically on your speed as a footballer.
Overview:
- Importance of speed training for footballers
- Football-specific speed
- Physical principles
- Strength training
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Specific training on the pitch
- Food
- Test results of a U13 team
- How effectively can I improve?
- How can you accurately measure your speed?
Importance of speed training for footballers
If you "only" play football on the side and don't have much time for additional training, then you should prioritize exercises with the ball. Speed training is extremely important for footballers who have big goals and need to work on all aspects to achieve them. Training speed is therefore essential to reaching your maximum potential as a footballer. Great players like Bale or Mbappé show impressively how their speed can even decide games.
Football-specific speed
When we talk about speed training, you probably imagine a normal straight sprint. However, in football there are a lot of abrupt changes of direction, "stop and go" movements, and above all 1-10m sprints. You should approach the training accordingly and incorporate various elements (more on that later).
Physical principles
I have prepared a very short theory block for you so that you understand the necessary background knowledge for the structure of speed training: Muscles consist of different types of muscle fibers. A distinction is made between slow-twitch and fast-twitch muscle fibers (Fig. 1). The latter are crucial for speed and are largely innate. These fibers are activated during high-intensity exercise such as sprints or strength training with a barbell. However, there is a third type of muscle fiber, the intermediate ones, which are very adaptable and can therefore ensure that you become effectively faster with the right speed training. This explains why you need intensive exercise with sprints and strength training for speed training. We will go into this in more detail in the next point.
Figure 1: Slow twitch muscle fibers on the left, fast twitch muscle fibers on the right
Strength training
Strength training is an important part of speed training. Effective speed training includes not only sprints but also specific strength training. Speed and explosive power are particularly important for sprints. You can train these very well through targeted strength exercises for the torso and leg area. Well-trained muscles are the basis for all sprints. But if you want to optimize your speed training plan, you should also integrate explosive (perform the exercise with the greatest possible force and speed) and reactive (swinging movement and then braking with the target muscles and immediately accelerating again in the other direction) strength training. As described above, the fast-twitch muscle fibers are responsible for enabling us to perform fast, explosive movements, such as when starting. If you now do almost exclusively endurance exercises in a sport like football, there is a risk that too many intermediate fibers will convert into slow-twitch fibers and you will therefore lose speed. Suitable strength training is necessary to counteract this conversion. On the one hand, classic strength training with basic exercises is important in order to optimize the interaction of muscle fibers and to be able to generate more power in the shortest possible time. Important basic exercises to build up the necessary power are:
- Deadlifts
- Lunges
- Squats
For all of these exercises, you should work in the low repetition range to train maximum strength (1-5 repetitions) and allow enough rest (approx. 2-4 minutes) between sets. You can do around 3-6 sets per exercise. A little less at first and more as you gain experience. To achieve sustainable progress, you should ensure steady progression (increase weight, number of sets, number of repetitions).
A clean execution is also a prerequisite to avoid injuries to the musculoskeletal system.
On the other hand, explosive strength training specifically trains the fast-twitch fibers and ensures their maintenance. A combination of basic exercises and explosive strength training is recommended.
You can find some explosive strength exercises for on the pitch in the following video:
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Specific sprint training on the pitch
A good warm-up is particularly important for speed training; without this, the risk of injury is extremely high. During the explosive starts during speed training, you can easily get a strain if your muscles are not already warm. Therefore, a good warm-up is on the agenda at the beginning of every speed training session.
Since speed cannot be improved when tired, it is extremely important to have long enough breaks between exercises. The nervous system must have enough time to regain full readiness for action, and the muscle fibers must have enough time to fully replenish their ATP and creatine phosphate stores.
A rule of thumb:
- Allow at least 30 seconds of rest for every 10 meter sprint distance
It is also important that you internalize the movement sequences of the exercises well at the beginning and only then complete them under time pressure. Quality over quantity! If this is the case, it is important that you complete the exercises at maximum speed. This is where measuring yourself against a training partner is a good idea. This way you push each other to achieve top performances. If you don't have a training partner, you can also run against the clock and fight against your own best time. This makes training more fun and motivation greater.
To meet the football-specific requirements, exercises are recommended with:
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Running ladder (primarily helps with coordination and not maximum speed)
- change of direction
- Stop-and-go
- Explosive elements
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Resistance (The exercise shown in the video was performed with a sprint distance that was too short)
The following video presents exactly 5 exercises in this area:
To further focus on the change of direction, the following exercises are recommended:
Food
In strength and sprint training, muscle growth can play an important role in addition to optimizing the interaction of muscle fibers. The following nutritional considerations must be taken into account: To build muscle for sprinting, you should eat more than you burn (a calorie surplus of around 300 calories is enough) so that your body can use the excess energy to build the necessary muscles. If this is not the case, you are wasting potential.
In addition, it can be useful to take creatine as a dietary supplement. The additional intake of Creatine360 has a positive effect on explosive power performance during short, maximum strength efforts, such as a sprint during a game.
The caffeinated product Pregame360 can also help you to sharpen your focus. A caffeinated product tailored to footballers is a good option, especially if you are a little tired before training.
If you want to learn all the basics about nutrition for footballers, watch the following video or take a look at the 360Football Nutrition Guide :
Test results of a U13 team
Over the course of six weeks, we conducted 10 training sessions, each lasting 20-30 minutes (a total of 4.2 hours of training time). To keep things simple, we focused on a few exercises with the running ladder, various sprint variations and a short core strength training session. We then measured the 10m and 30m times of nine players before and after the training program.
On average, the nine players improved their 10m sprint time by 0.04 seconds or 1.89%.
On average, the nine players improved their 30m sprint time by 0.14 seconds or 2.96%.
How effectively can I improve?
As we already know, your speed potential is largely determined by the genetic distribution of muscle fiber types. In addition (in order to make a clear statement, significantly more test subjects would have to be tested) our test also seems to have a tendency that only a low percentage improvement is possible in 10 weeks and thus no great effect can be achieved with specific training compared to, for example, endurance. However, if you compare the training effort with the result, a noticeable effect was achieved in a total of ONLY 4.2 hours of training time. What can we learn from this? Speed is still dominated by genetic conditions. But with relatively little effort you can squeeze out the perhaps 2-3 decisive percent and thus be faster to the ball than your opponent.
How can you accurately measure your speed?
When you think of precise speed measurement, you usually think of expensive equipment. Fortunately, there are now inexpensive and practical speed measuring devices that measure to the hundredth of a second. We recommend the Jawku measuring device, which we use almost every day with our players. The device resembles a watch and works together with the Jawku speed app.
Since we fully support this product ourselves and speed measurement can be very important for every footballer and coach, we have organized a 15% discount code for Jawku , which is "360football" . You can use this code when purchasing a Jawku measuring device .
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Mark Maslow. “Muscle fiber types” http://www.marathonfitness.de/muskelfasertypen-tabelle-bestimmen/ MarathonFitness.
Denis Sandig. “Training Tips” http://www.trainingsworld.com/training/schnelligkeitstraining-sti109207/grundlagentraining-verbessern-ihre-schnelligkeit-komplex-2789577.html. Trainingworld.
"Strength and speed in football" https://sport.lu.ch/-/media/Sport/Dokumente/J_u_S/th_3_kraft_und_schnelligkeit_im_fussball_gafx.pdf?la=de-CH Swiss Football Association p.5
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"Can you train speed?" (Böhler, T. 2021) https://www.online-trainer-lizenz.de/blog/schnelligkeitstraining/
"Strength and speed in football" https://sport.lu.ch/-/media/Sport/Dokumente/J_u_S/th_3_kraft_und_schnelligkeit_im_fussball_gafx.pdf?la=de-CH Swiss Football Association p. 8,9 (accessed 16.09.2015)
“Aerobic-anaerobic threshold” http://www.runnersworld.de/training/aerob-anaerobe-schwelle.261018.htm
